Ethiopia has long aspired to harness the power of the Nile through a dam, but for more than a century this ambition remained a distant dream, stymied by internal instability and complex regional politics. An initial step was taken during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie with a project site survey, but decades would pass before any tangible progress could be made.
On April 2, 2011, Ethiopia took a monumental step toward making this dream a reality.
At the time, Cairo and former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were preoccupied with the Arab Spring and civil unrest. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was quietly laying the foundation stone for ‘Project X’ — an undertaking that would eventually become one of the world’s largest hydropower dams.
The path was long and arduous. Construction was initially slated to last five years and consume 81 billion Birr. That figure soon swelled to 233 billion Birr over 14 years. Each of those years brought with it immense diplomatic pressure and a cascade of challenges. Yet, through it all, countless Ethiopians, both celebrated and unknown, displayed a heroic resolve reminiscent of the victory at Adwa.
In this article, Yared Nigussie of The Reporter Magazine has captured the stories of these individuals, chronicling their indelible contributions. The article also includes a cautionary message from experts: the dam may be finished, but Ethiopia must brace for continued diplomatic scrutiny.
The Peoples’ Project
In 2011, at a collection center in the Wolayta Zone, an elderly man walked for miles and offered the only thing he had: a single hen, his sole source of income through egg sales. “This is all I have, but it’s for my country,” he told the startled volunteers accepting contributions for the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). That hen, which was later auctioned for 17,000 Birr, became a powerful symbol of the national spirit behind one of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure projects.
A journalist who reported the story at the time told The Reporter Magazine, “His hen inspired thousands. People saw his sacrifice and opened their wallets—from coins to livestock.”
In that moment, a single act of selflessness echoed across the nation and galvanized a movement.
From villagers giving up their meager savings to engineers working 18-hour shifts, GERD became more than a dam—it became a vessel for national pride, identity, and collective hope.
“My brother sold his only cow to buy a GERD bond. When I worked on the spillway, I thought of him. We weren’t just pouring concrete; we were pouring our hopes into something bigger than ourselves,” Habtamu Aklilu, a laborer who took part in the construction, told The Reporter Magazine.
Civil engineer Alemayehu Tsegaye shared how, as a young graduate, he felt the nation’s heartbeat in the sacrifices of the farmers who bought bonds with their monthly income.
“We were building a nation, not just a dam,” he said.
Construction worker Genet Asfaw, who mixed concrete at the site, described how deeply personal the work became.
“I sent half my wages home to my kids, but I also bought a GERD bond. One day, my son visited and saw the dam rising. He hugged me and said, ‘Mother, you’re building Ethiopia.’ That made every sore muscle worth it,” she said.
Tewodros Sisay, a hydraulic engineer who worked on the saddle dam—a five-kilometer-long earth-and-rock structure holding back over 50 billion cubic meters of water—remembers the surreal moment the dam neared full capacity.
“The early morning mist was thick, and the saddle dam looked like a spine curving across the horizon,” he said. As the water reached its crest, a deep resonant hum vibrated through the ground.
“It wasn’t simply water moving. It created a unique ecstasy and national pride,” Tewodros recalled. He and other engineers stood in silence, helmets off, hands on hearts, as the flowing water seemed to whisper stories of generations past and the rising tide of Ethiopia’s future.
From Mystery to Masterpiece
The GERD, initially called the Millennium Hydroelectric Project, was envisioned to produce 6,000 megawatts of power when the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid the project’s foundation stone in Guba Woreda, Benishangul-Gumuz Regional State, on April 2, 2011.
The dream was bold: to transform Ethiopia’s development trajectory and shift the balance of power in the Nile Basin. Yet, the journey would prove long and fraught with challenges. Originally expected to be completed within five years, the dam took 14 years to build.
The Declaration of Principles (DoP) on the GERD was signed on March 23, 2015, in Khartoum, Sudan, during the administration of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, alongside President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt and the then President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.
The DoP was a landmark political agreement among these three Nile riparian countries, outlining the principles that would guide the use and management of the Nile River in relation to GERD. It was the first major agreement of its kind signed by all three nations.
The principle of ensuring the safety and security of downstream countries was among the most important cornerstones incorporated in the DoP. Although some experts argue the DoP was created to appease the downstream nations of Sudan and Egypt, the document is still seen as an example of effective diplomacy and policy-making.
In 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) inherited the incomplete project amidst widespread discontent and made sweeping changes. One of his most consequential decisions was removing the state-owned military-industrial conglomerate Metals and Engineering Corporation (MetEC) from the project.
At the time, MetEC was in hot water over its perceived failures in GERD’s electro-mechanical works, including turbine installation, as well as corruption scandals.
“It is a project that was supposed to be completed within five years, but seven or eight years later, not a single turbine is operational,” Abiy told the media on August 25, 2018.
Lack of experience and poor project management were cited among the reasons for terminating MetEC’s contract. The PM further revealed that Salini Impregilo (now Webuild), the Italian company responsible for civil works, had demanded compensation for delays.
“We decided to cancel MetEC’s contract and offer the job to companies with experience. Otherwise, it would take even longer,” Abiy said.
A controversial documentary aired on state-owned media seven years ago not only stirred public debate but also touched on the involvement of MetEC, which has been widely criticized for its role in grand corruption and poor-quality electromechanical works at the GERD project.
Kifle Horo, an engineer and GERD project manager, did not respond to The Reporter Magazine’s requests for comment on this article. However, five years ago, he noted during a public discussion that delays were partly due to unexpected underground rock formations cited by the civil work contractor—Webuild, requiring design changes and deadline extensions.
He also acknowledged the unrealistic expectations around turbine installations, admitting, “By 2017, two turbines should have generated power, but electromechanical activities were very late.”
Despite the obstacles, the dam moved forward. Pietro Salini, CEO of Webuild, speaking at a ceremony marking the start of partial power generation in 2022, expressed pride in working alongside Ethiopians.
“This project didn’t come easily. There were many enemies, and finding the finance was extremely difficult. When you don’t have money, it’s much harder to build. But we faced the challenges together,” he said.
Raising finance through crowd funding was one of the GERD’s greatest achievements.
Over 23.6 billion Birr was raised domestically through bond sales and public donations, with another 1.6 billion Birr contributed by the diaspora, according to Aregawi Berhe (PhD), director-general of the Office of the National Council for the Coordination of Public Participation on the Construction of GERD.
The remainder of the estimated 233 billion Birr total cost was covered by government funding—making GERD one of the largest self-financed infrastructure projects in Africa.
Diplomatic Maneuvering
Diplomatically, the GERD became a centerpiece in one of the world’s most contentious transboundary water disputes. Former Minister of Water and Energy Seleshi Bekele (PhD) led negotiations with Egypt and Sudan, pushing for African Union–led technical talks.
Ethiopia maintained that the dam was a development project, not a security threat. The country rejected binding external mediation, instead advocating for data-driven and African-led solutions to operational concerns such as filling schedules and hydrological management.
Fekahmed Negash, a former GERD negotiator and an expert on water resources, emphasizes that Ethiopia’s ability to fund the dam domestically gave it an economic, political and infrastructure leverage in negotiations.
“GERD was not simply a power plant—it was a strategic asset,” he said.
The project’s construction model was itself unconventional.
The government used an ‘Engineering Procurement and Construction’ (EPC) model, conducting studies, design, procurement, and building simultaneously. This allowed rapid mobilization but also revealed unforeseen challenges that demanded continuous redesign. Some of these modifications were made to address concerns from downstream countries.
In 2011, Ethiopia invited the International Panel of Experts (IPoE)—including specialists from Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, and external experts from Germany, France, Britain, and South Africa—to assess the dam’s design.
“The move was intended to demonstrate transparency, though fundamental disagreements over water rights persisted,” Fekahmed said.
Egypt, dependent on the Nile for 97 percent of its freshwater, has consistently viewed the GERD as a threat. The tensions stem from colonial-era treaties Ethiopia never recognized: the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which gave Egypt veto power over upstream projects, and the 1959 Egypt-Sudan treaty, which allocated all Nile waters between those two countries—leaving Ethiopia out entirely.
Ethiopia, which contributes over 85 percent of the Nile’s flow through its highlands, has long argued for its sovereign right to utilize its resources for poverty alleviation and development. Successive Egyptian governments have pushed to maintain the status quo, viewing any upstream dam as an existential risk.
Fekahmed and other experts, like Kiram Tadesse, a researcher with a focus on the Nile River Basin, argue that the diplomatic and financial pressure Ethiopia faced was shaped by Egypt’s strong alliances with Western powers and international institutions.
Advocacy groups like International Rivers Network also echoed opposition similar to their stance on Ethiopia’s earlier Gibe III Dam, Fekahmed said.
The delays only added to the project’s massive cost, including additional payments to the contractor in charge of civil engineering. Meanwhile, countries like China, Turkey, Brazil, and Russia—upper riparian states in their own regions—offered solidarity, recognizing their shared challenges with downstream neighbors.
Experts also raised the development and political debate over the GERD.
Gedion Asfaw(Eng), Chair of the Ethiopian delegation’s GERD Negotiating Technical Committee, said the role of science and the issue of securitization or politics had also been raised from Ethiopia and Egypt, respectively. “Ethiopia insisted that neighbors should focus on the filling and operation of the dam as development project, not as a political or security matter. That’s why we pushed for the independent scientific committee,” he said.
“Ethiopia has made a huge compromise at the outset when it agreed to open negotiation on its self-financed hydropower dam,” Gedion said, adding, “We’ve never been consulted on any of the numerous and large projects of the downstream countries built in the past and currently under construction.”
GERD’S final structure is staggering in scale. The main dam, 1,780 meters long and 145 meters high, creates Africa’s largest artificial lake, with a storage capacity of 74 billion cubic meters. Originally planned to produce 6,450 megawatts, the dam was redesigned to deliver 5,150 megawatts from 13 turbines.
Despite the revised capacity, it will still make Ethiopia the biggest power exporter in the region.
Kiram argues that the dam has already had a unifying effect domestically, cutting across ethnic and political lines.
“Once fully operational, it can also promote cooperation among basin countries through energy trade and interdependence,” he said.
The project’s civil and electromechanical components progressed at different speeds, and Kiram attributes this to the differing experience levels of the companies involved. The delays came at a cost—requiring significant extensions, redesigns, and additional funds—but the symbolic and material value far outweighs the challenges.
Researchers like Kiram stressed that the Nile Basin is among the most complex transboundary river systems in the world, with natural, historical, and geopolitical layers that make consensus elusive. External actors have often amplified rather than eased the tension, with Egypt leveraging its alliances with Western powers and Arab League members to shape the international narrative on the GERD.
Despite these challenges, Ethiopia views the GERD as a cornerstone for regional integration. Once fully operational, the dam will make the country a major electricity exporter to Nile Basin Initiative members and beyond, creating interdependence that could, in theory, encourage cooperation.
Successive governments in Cairo have insisted on maintaining the “status quo” distribution of Nile waters, regarding any upstream developments as existential threats.
Against this backdrop, the GERD has become as much a symbol of sovereignty for Ethiopia as it is a perceived lifeline for Egypt.
An Assignment Still Pending
Fekahmed warns that Ethiopia must be prepared for continued diplomatic pressure but believes the GERD provides a platform for new types of regional relationships, where shared energy resources underpin economic and political stability.
“Providing a viable solution to international pressures is the only way out for Ethiopia,” said the expert.
As GERD nears full operation, Ethiopia finds itself at a turning point. The dam is a monument to resilience—built with domestic resources, defended through tireless diplomacy, and realized through the shared sacrifice of millions.
It is the legacy of Meles Zenawi, engineers like the late Simegnew Bekele, and countless unsung citizens. It is a reminder that Ethiopia’s future will be shaped not just by the flow of water, but by the strength of political choices, the maturity of cooperation, and the courage to dream beyond limits.
